Kickstarter Katchup – 8th September 2012

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The winners keep pouring in. Another long list of successful projects this week, which I always like to think of as, “ones I don’t have to think of a new sentence for any more.” A few losers too, but so far the Katchup column is bucking the trend for Kickstarter success rates. Clearly I’m a lucky charm. Unless I show any confidence that your project will inevitably succeed, at which point I’m a curse and a millstone around your neck. As ever, please read the rules before huffing in the comments – I don’t know how to get more passive-aggressive about this.

The Rules

Featuring a game in this list doesn’t mean we endorse it. We likely haven’t played, and as such can’t say whether it will be worth your cash. That’s your call.

Letting me know about a game (which you can do via my name above) doesn’t mean it will definitely be included. Leaving links in the comments is a good way to let other readers know about projects, but please email me if you want them considered for the list.

We only include games where pledges reach developers only if the target is met.

Projects asking for fifty billion dollars, with 45c in pledges, fall off the list eventually. It gives more space for other games.

Projects that have reached their funding get included in the Winners list, and then aren’t featured in the weeks after that, to give more attention to those that are still needing the cash. Tough if you don’t like it.

We recommend readers with a nervous heart or of a pregnant disposition take care in this article.

The attempt to remake the HL2 mod, Age Of Chivalry, into a fully fledged game has been in development for quite a while now. But a recent Kickstarter that we featured on the site (but I forgot to include in this list) has just been successful. And as we’ve noted, it’s looking really splendid. They were after $50,000, and with six days left they’ve got $60,000.

Wow, this went from shaky to a roaring success in a week. After $250,000, a week ago they were $70k short. And in those seven days they made another $115,000. That’ll do it. So with 62 hours remaining on the clock, we should now be seeing a new digital CCG from the creators of Ascension, and with the help of the creation of Magic: The Gathering.

The Chilean developers got the last minute surge they needed, reaching $11k of their $10k target before time ran out. We will now see if PopCap think it looks a little bit too much like Plants Vs. Zombies, I suppose.

A Gameboy-inspired RPG looked like it might succeed, but it’s swooped past its target less than halfway through the campaign. Only wanting $6k, it’s now on nearly $8k, making their stretch goal of $9,000 look pretty inevitable. And it might be a good thing too, since their $6k breakdown on the page entirely forgot the 10% they’ll lose in fees.

Halfway through and they reached their sizeable $400,000 desires. A new Broken Sword game was always going to be popular, but they’re now on course for a cool half million, already over $460k with two weeks left. Their stretch goals reach to a million, which would greenlight development of Beneath A Steel Sky 2. However, I think that’s a pretty unlikely target.

Oh goodness, it’s getting left to the wire. Can the hexagons and strategy get the last three thousand they need in the next four days? It would be just cruel if they didn’t. You can read Adam’s experience with it here.

WOW. Here’s one that fell between two Katchups, and did something extraordinary. The Homestuck web comic appears to be a little popular then. An adventure game based on it seems to be a rather wanted idea, too. Nearly $900,000 made in five days, and that’s despite a pitch video that at no point explains what it’s actually going to be. So confident are they at this point that they’ve listed stretch goals up to $2.5m, with more to be revealed.

This is quite the dream team, getting the Pro Pinball team back together, with the rights to the license returned, and the design help of a pinball machine making legend, Pat Lawlor. Silverball, as Fuse Games, had been making Nintendo pinball games for a while, but were of course most famous for Active Health With Carol Vorderman. Fuse went bankrupt, but they reformed as Silverball and have been making iOS pinball projects. And they’ve now negotiated all the rights to the Pro series. They’re already received a $10k single pledge – let’s hope it’s a real one.

Running with a super-long Kickstarter, there are seven weeks for this 4X space strategy to reach its goal. As ever with 4X, you’re better off watching the video than trying to understand it from my wordmess.

Much more likely to make it is Camden, the first project from Boyan Radakovich’s new company, Gamesmith. Apparently they’re planning to make a series of games via Kickstarter, the first being a tile-based game in which you attempt to create your own Camden market. It features “bobbies”, which is how you know it’s made by Americans.

Aw, it would actually be too biologically sad if this doesn’t make it, after it’s $1500 spurt last week. This week, less than $400. The idea is to tell your own tales within the game for other people to experience. The game already exists, with player islands available to see. He’s only after $4k, and pledges will unlock an account for the game to the full version for various lengths.

A first-person group-based RPG that’s just launched its Kickstarter, that certainly has its own unique look – floating platforms, in a strange magical world. Although let’s discuss the whole name in the game title thing. Yes, it’s his name. But it also just happens to be the name of famous games developer, Chris Taylor of Gas Powered Games, he behind Total Annihilation and Dungeon Siege. And it’s the name of Chris Taylor, famous co-designer of the original Fallout. And he is neither of those people. And that doesn’t sit comfortably with me.

Hey rich benefactors? Fancy an RPG? This one has seven hours left and needs just over $10k. Aiming to be a very moddable online tactical RPG, the game will come with all the tools to create your own content for the game. So once you’re done with the official game, you can play other people’s creations.

About the Wings campaign, $350,000 is a ludicrously big pile of money for a mere remake of a not so famous 20 yo Amiga game. I’m not sure there are quite as many gamers who remember that and would pay money to play it again. Besides, the project video is a landmark of bad taste and doesn’t show anything interesting, and since we haven’t seen any sort of actual gameplay, it really doesn’t inspire confidence. The Cinemaware guys got it all wrong.

“Producer/Director/Writer – Wade K. Savage is an award winning theatre and film director. His short films have shown globally. His most recent short film “Hunt” (2011) screened at the Bram Stoker International Film Festival. His 2010 short “The Dead Wastes” won the Night of Horror International Film Festival’s coveted ‘Independent Spirit’ award. This is the filmmakers’ first Fan Film.”

Has anyone who has seen those comment on how good they were? I haven’t seen them.

And Planetary Annihilation has reached its second stretch goal with a week left! Hell, I’m excited for that one. It’s the first Kickstarter game I’ve actually backed–it’s looking like money well spent. They might even make it to their third stretch goal at this point.

I’m not disagreeing with you (how can one disagree with a fact?), but they made it clear in the videos that they do intend to keep the visual style, because simple figures give more clarity than 20 camouflaged units that look alike on browngreen terrain.

The first thing you see at the start of the pitch video is Gameplay Visualization, which is indeed probably not clear enough for everyone.
They also mention how this video has been created in one of the updates and the UI displayed during the space station crash screams fake.
But yeah, I would not be surprised to learn that 1/3 of the backers think that this is a real gameplay video and Uber could have been a little clearer on this but I you get fooled by something like this, it is only your fault imho.

“Gameplay Visualization” is a meaningless and deliberately confusing phrase. If they weren’t trying to mislead they should simply have said something like “not actual gameplay” or “artist’s impression”. You can’t blame the customer if the salesman is willfully misrepresenting their product.

Whether or not you understood, oh great wise one, doesn’t change one iota that it’s a misleading term when any number of much clearer words or phrases could have done. “Artist’s rendering,” “prerendered mock-up,” hell, even “target rendering” is a common albeit itself sidestepping the point.

They purposefully picked a word that doesn’t scream “fake video,” and it worked.

Not to mention, now that I’m looking at it, that the multiple screenshots in that kickstarter – most of them looking to be grabs from the video – do NOT have any such qualification. Which is probably how they got me.

Looks good. Sadly I can’t justify a pre-order without a demo/alpha or something to go by. I’ll almost defiantly get it (Still got SC somewhere, whish I still had TA :P ) but can’t set the funds out in advance. :/

My TA cds have been stolen a while ago, but I grabbed TA + extensions & TA kingdom at half price last week on GOG. The promotion is over, but the price is reasonable (if you don’t mind repaying for something you bought a while ago).

I really don’t get the appeal of Homestuck. Problem Sleuth was awesome, but Homestuck employed walls of text that were no fun to read and was even more convoluted than PS with none of its gleeful silliness, so I just gave up. I dunno.

I gave up too about a year ago. I’d followed it right from the beginning and loved the first year or so when the major characters were being established, and the world built, but then it got more and more bizarre and difficult to follow. I really like Andrew Hussie’s style and sense of humour, and his work ethic is admirable, to say the least, but his stories do have a tendency to disappear up their own backsides after a while, sadly.

I actually find the walls of text pretty great. At least, I did until trollspeak started making them even harder to follow, but I’m current, so I shouldn’t complain. Incidentally, relating to it’s complexity and difficulty to follow-ness, pbs’s idea channel recently did a video calling Homestuck the Internet’s Ulysses. Interesting.

And, I must say, the music in the video is great, as is the music for the rest of the comic. I probably wouldn’t have stuck with it if not for the awesome work of the music team.

I love the webcomic but it still annoys me a little that Hussie can ride the coattails of his success to such an extent that he will be funded without telling anyone what they are funding.
Oh well, such is popularity I suppose. I won’t pretend I didn’t donate.

After Adam’s nice words about Expeditions: Conquistador there was such a surge in pledges that I thought it may be a chance of reaching it’s first stretch goal. It only has to maintain it’s daily average to get over the line. I think Kicktraq has a projection of about 108%

Apparently the American McGee thing was more a result of EA’s doing rather than Mr McGee himself, he talks about it in a Eurogamer interview, it’s the first question they ask too… link to eurogamer.net

I think he gets a pass. It’s a very common name and neither of the other Chris Taylors are known for stylizing their games like that. ‘Sid Meier’s Arakion!’ by some other Sid Meier might be a bit different.

I don’t think the Chris Taylor/s name carries anything like enough weight to make deliberately trying to confuse people like this a particularly effective plan anyway. It may prove effective in generating coverage by being (very slightly) controversial however. That’s why I’m calling my KS project “CliffyB’s Bitchez in Kitchenz – Always Online Edition”.

It seems a really sleazy practice to me. If you put your name in the actual title like that, you’re implying that you have enough claim to fame that people will know who you are because of your past work. Doing this when no one’s ever heard of you but there happens to be not one but two other much more famous people in the genre is disingenuous at best.

I don’t think he’s trying to confuse anyone. I just watched his video, and he doesn’t refer to anything other than his game or the products he liked that he’s trying to recreate. Besides which, how many people know the other Chris Taylors? I knew only the one from Total Annihilation and Gas Powered Games, but didn’t even remember that until it was mentioned here.

Gah, I’m a huge fan of digital pinball, but I can’t make myself pay $50 for five tables that don’t even have an interesting license. And I have to pay more if I want them on both iOS and PC. Sorry guys, but too rich for my blood by far.

1. What? Is Chris Taylor kickstarting a RPG? I bet it’s like Dungeon Siege!
2. No! It’s a first person dungeon crawler! Even better!
3. Wait, this is not Chris Taylor…
4. No leveling up. Linear environments. So is this a streamlined RPG? No thanks.

“Expeditions: Conquistador” ended up at $77,247, and the devs have promised to add in follower abilities even though they didn’t hit the $80,000 stretch goal for that. Logic Artists will also be taking PayPal pledges in the near future for people who didn’t get in on the Kickstarter, or want to increase their pledges. They said it would last until they need to close it to ship out the physical goods.